The top 10 drivers covered by less than five tenths! The qualifying session for the sixth and final round of the French F4 Championship was undoubtedly more closely contested than ever. While one might have thought the Circuit Paul Ricard, featuring one of the longest track layouts of the season at 5,842 metres, would create larger gaps, that was far from the case.
Between Kota Tsuchihashi and Matthéo Dauvergne, the battle came down to less than a hundredth of a second. The Japanese driver made the most of the opening third of the session, setting a benchmark of 2:07.587. An immediate response from his rivals was anticipated, but an incident brought out the red flag, sending the FFSA Academy single-seaters back to the pit lane.
Once the drivers returned to the track, improvements came thick and fast. Nine of them dipped below the 2:08 mark, though none managed to beat Tsuchihashi’s time. Matthéo Dauvergne closed in to within 9 thousandths, while Australian Lewis Francis was just 10 thousandths adrift. Lilian Soares and Belgium’s Thibaut Ramaekers rounded out the top 5, finishing less than a tenth off the polesitter. The newly crowned 2026 French Champion, Guillaume Bouzar, took 6th place ahead of American Maverick McKenna, Israeli Yuval Rosen, Hugo Herrouin, and Tom Dussol. The latter will therefore start from pole position for Race 2 courtesy of the reverse-grid format for the top 10 qualifiers. In his very first race appearance, Gabriel Canal qualified 16th out of 30.
Meanwhile, Tsuchihashi kept pushing to secure the fastest second-best lap among all drivers, earning pole position for both Race 1 and Race 3. The second-best lap standings saw a slight reshuffle behind the Honda-backed driver, with Soares in 2nd and McKenna in 5th flanking Francis and Ramaekers.
Among the female drivers, Jade Jacquet set the fastest time ahead of Austria’s Clara Stiebleichinger, who proved to be the quickest of those contending for the French Championship title in this category.
